ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 169 



lie evidently did not consider this writing, from which I shall qnote, 

 more than a simple statement of fact, and made it in the nature of an 

 answer to the order of a superior officer. 



SYNOPSIS OF LIEUTENANT MAYNARD'S INVESTIGATIONS. 



The SUBSTANCE OF Lieutenant Maynard's report. — The islands 

 of St. Paul and St. George, or the seal islands, as tliej^ are more com- 

 monly called, are the principal ones of the Pribilof group; the other 

 two, known as Otter and Walrus, are merely outlying islets. They 

 are situated in Bering Sea, between the parallels of 56° to 58° of north 

 latitude and 169" to 171° of west longitude. St. Paul has an area of 

 33 square miles, while St. George claims but 29, with, respectively, 42 

 and 29 miles of shore line each. 



Climate. — They are enveloj^ed in summer by dense fogs, through 

 which the sun rarely makes its way, and are surrounded in severe 

 winters by fields of ice driven down by the arctic winds. They have 

 no sheltered harbors beyond slight indentations in the shore line that 

 afford a lee for vessels and tolerable landing places for boats when 

 certain winds are blowing. 



Shores and vegetation. — The shores are bold and rocky, with 

 strips of sand beach, and are covered by broken rocks at intervals 

 between tliem. The interior of both islands is broken and hilly; 

 neither tree nor shrub grows ui^on them, but they are clothed with 

 grass, moss, and wild flowers. For nearlj^ one hundred years fur seals 

 have been known to visit them annually in great numbers for the 

 purpose of bringing forth and raising their young, which circumstance 

 gives those islands their great commercial importance. 



Habits of the seal. — These seals occupy the islands from the 

 breaking away of the ice in the spring until it surrounds their coasts 

 again in early winter — that is, from the middle of May until Decem- 

 ber. In milder hyemal seasons, when there is little or no ice about 

 the islands, a few seals have been seen swimming around in the water 

 throughout the entire year, but these exhibitions rarely occur. The 

 fur seals are not known to haul up on land elsewhere within the limits 

 of the North Pacific Ocean, except at Bering and Copper islands, Ijang 

 in Bering Sea near the Asiatic coast, and Robbins Reef, a small rock 

 on the coast. They certainly go from those landing places to the 

 southward in the fall, for they are frequently seen in the sea, either 

 solitary or in shoals of thousands, and are killed in the water all the 

 way from Sitka to the Straits of Fuca. In 1833, 54 were taken by the 

 Russians on the Farralone Islands, off: seaward from the entrance to 

 the Bay of San Francisco. « There seems to be no reason why they can 

 not remain in the water during the entire time they are absent from 

 the island, for they eat their food there at all times, and are able to 

 sleep upon its surface. 



Classification of the seals. — They may be divided into two 

 classes — the breeding and the nonbreeding seals. The former com- 

 prise the full-grown males or bulls, the adult females or cows, and 

 their young or pups. The latter embrace the young or bachelor males 

 and the yearlings of both classes. Each of these classes leave the 

 water and haul up along the shores of the islands nearly in j uxta- 

 position to each other as they are massed on the land, but they are 

 entirely separate. They choose certain portions of the shore to the 

 exclusion of the rest, not all of any one class being together, but 

 spreading into many communities, which are often several miles apart. 



